Wingnut on Wingnut Crime: Rush v Norquist

Grab a ringside seat for Rush vs Grover Norquist, folks. Not Rush Limbaugh, mind you, but Erik Rush, the Worldnutdaily columnist who is black but thinks America suffers from an excess of “negrophilia.” While regular Republicans are starting to tire of Norquist’s anti-tax pledge, Rush exposes the real truth about Norquist:

Norquist, as many know, is founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform; the tax pledge was his brainchild. The signers of the pledge agreed to oppose increases in marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses. The press and the liberal establishment credit Norquist with being one of the individuals who “really run” the Republican Party.

Norquist is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which qualifies him for a place in Satan’s pantheon of arch-devils, in the view of many hard-line conservatives and libertarians. The CFR, one of several politically eclectic organizations wherein there is a queer overlap between Democratic and Republican power players, is considered to be instrumental in many “New World Order” conspiracy theories, some of which appear much less theoretical these days. So, Norquist is either doing an abysmal job of “really running” the GOP, or he is – as I charge many Republican leaders are doing – simply keeping rank-and-file Republicans distracted while the socialists go their merry unmolested way.

It’s kind of funny watching the ultra-far-right attack the far right as being too far left, isn’t it? To the truly loony right wingers, Norquist is not a hardline anti-tax conservative, he’s a weak-kneed liberal — not to mention a secret Muslim working hard to turn America over to the terrorists. And no, I’m not making that last part up. Frank Gaffney, Robert Spencer and many others make exactly that claim.

I’ve been thinking about Ezra Klein’s piece in the Washington Post about Grover Norquist recently. He titled it “Norquist is winning.”

The gist of the piece was that Grover Norquist knew, and knows now, that his “never vote to raise taxes in any scenario whatsoever” pledge was a phantom. There would come a time at some point in the future, for some reason, that taxes have to be raised. He knew that republicans would break eventually.

However, considering the recent GOP counteroffer on the fiscal cliff, his real aim of moving the goalposts becomes much more apparent.

Its not so much that republicans always vote against raising taxes, forever, but that, almost directly because of Norquist’s influence, the GOP views any revenue gains whatsoever as such a massive concession that the democrats ought to give up massive concessions on their own policy. And he’s successfully brought much of the establishment over to this view.

ArtK

The CFR, one of several politically eclectic organizations wherein there is a queer overlap between Democratic and Republican power players…